


Descent

by stop_theworld



Category: His Dark Materials - Pullman
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 22:06:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stop_theworld/pseuds/stop_theworld
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They exist together, still and keen, dragonflies preserved in a perfect void. Their wings are gold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Descent

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elithewho](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elithewho/gifts).



> That line in italics was borrowed from Hamlet.

They fall for so long that they forget they are falling; movement is relative, after all. Their eyes grow accustomed to a dark so thorough that they shed the need to see as a serpent sheds its skin. They learn to perceive in a different way; they are no longer blind and no longer tumbling; they exist together, still and keen, dragonflies preserved in a perfect void. Their wings are gold.

.

Her heart quickened the moment she saw him; she felt girlish and foolish; she felt also dangerous, and her fingers tingled with static electricity.

(Somewhere, Marisa Coulter will stop herself, take a deep breath, and turn herself away; somewhere, Marisa Coulter will remind herself to focus.)

She took a step forward.

They were still mingling, all of them, no one yet seated; still, her direct approach and extension of her hand drew certain sharp pairs of eyes, she knew, and she chose in that moment not to care.

"Lord Asriel," she declared crisply; her voice resonated, subtly raised; performing a part and wasn't she always. "I recognized you at once, naturally. Your work fascinates me. Would you do me the honor?"

He would never, she knew, be taken in by her power to dazzle, but he would appreciate it.

His lips curled into a smile.

.

(Somewhere, Marisa Coulter will sit herself down and engage in inane chatter with all the right people. She will glance down the table time and again, quickly, involuntarily; she will do nothing. She will lack that last, vital dash of courage, or of recklessness. She will want, but she will not take.)

.

They conversed freely, roundly ignoring everyone else at the table: he could afford to; she was feeling daring. Their speech enlivened her and made her short of breath, as though she had been sprinting, or dancing. He told her all of what he had seen and done, and the part of her that hungered for adventure soaked up every word and expanded, _as if increase of appetite had grown by what it fed on_, every word left her aching for that many more.

She refused to be reduced to merely a rapt listener, an admiring audience; she challenged him, and each time she did so she thrilled with the rush of it.

.

They can almost remember, the two of them together, remember when the world had solid form. Their struggling hearts are poisoned by the emptiness; their hearts might fail or they might meld; their minds might press up into a single one, remembering, echoing with strains of the past like music borne on a breeze from over the hills and far away. They might cling to one another until they dissolve, and then cling still, atoms binding to atoms. They yearn to fly free. They will yearn forever.

.

She had, Marisa reflected, broken at least seven various rules of social conduct already. She had chosen to be rash and she would pay a price, eventually; but it would be a small price. It always was, for her. It was a game: discover how far she could push before allowance would break instead of snap back into place. Allowance had not yet broken.

She thought of all this in a detached sort of way as she allowed Lord Asriel to remove her dress.

(Somewhere, allowance will break that very evening, when Edward arrives home earlier than anticipated, staggering a little. She will be exposed and excommunicated, and she will shed not a tear.

Somewhere, Asriel will flee; elsewhere, he will die. Elsewhere, he will fight, and still elsewhere, he will win.)  
She would ask herself, later, whose seduction it had been.

Men had tempted her in the past, had coaxed her with pretty whispers and discreet invitations, and she had refused every one. She held her fidelity close to her heart; it was her own secret martyrdom, the pedestal on which she had placed herself, which grew higher with every refusal – and which she had tumbled from when she had tumbled beneath Lord Asriel. Though she had approached him, was not his possession of her an indication of his triumph?

What decided it, she thought with certainty, was the child. One thing Marisa Coulter was not was a victim; to be taken in, conquered, and left to suffer the consequences – that was not her, could never be her story. It was out of the question. To have chosen, to have won, and then to have been punished by petulant fate for her victory – that was her story. The child, loathed as it was, was every proof of her dominance.

.

They went on for months undetected. She frequently berated herself for her recklessness; for all her myriad rationales, she knew she was no longer in control. Granted, nor was Asriel, and she took small, private consolation in the knowledge that she had as mysterious and inescapable a hold over him as he over her. They were propelling themselves towards an end that would inevitably destroy them both, yet despite everything they had fallen together, and they could not fall apart. Marisa scorned the idea that she loved Lord Asriel, yet she had long since accepted that what was between them was far more than lust. Their clandestine encounters fulfilled her in every way; when he spoke, she was transported back to their first meeting, when his words had seemed to illuminate a path for her into the wild unknown she so desperately desired to explore. Asriel had become her unknown, and she could no more relinquish him – the timbre of his voice, his hands on her skin, that wintry leathery scent that awakened all her senses – than relinquish her very self. When she kissed him, the strength of her ardor pulled her free of the life she had crafted for herself, the life she – yes – despised. When he locked her in his arms, too tight in his passion, she grew light in his embrace.

.

They fall, together, in the name of the child; they fall in the name of a love that seized them both and grew beyond that which they could comprehend. They fall until their eyes and hands and tongues are useless, yet they fall still, and the parts of them that are left entwine and metamorphose in a display that will never be observed, an invisible cycle that exists within the unending nothingness and sustains itself, sustains them, independent of everything, independent even of time. And they fall.

.

(And somewhere, their eyes meet across a crowded room. Somewhere, they are drawn together and it does not matter, and it is not wrong, and her untroubled smile is reflected in his eyes.)


End file.
